1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to dental instruments and, more specifically, to apparatus for holding dental instruments during cleaning and prior to sterilization.
2. Background Description
Different dental instruments are used by dentists and dental hygienists in performing various dental procedures, such as cleaning, filling, crown emplacement, extractions, etc. Such instruments, which include scalers, carvers, mirrors, explorers, mixing instruments, etc., to name a few, generally have an elongated handle of small diameter with an appropriately shaped tool mounted on one or both ends of the handle.
Certain types of dental instruments are always used in group to perform a particular dental procedure, such as three different instruments used for examination and cleaning, four or five instruments for crown preparation and mounting, and approximately ten instruments for placing a filling in a tooth.
After use, the dental instruments are placed in a basket in an ultrasonic cleaner for gross cleaning and then inserted into an autoclave for sterilization prior to reuse. However, it is common, particularly in dental offices with several dentists and/or hygienists, to intermix a number of groups of dental instruments in the ultrasonic cleaner as a single, large group. After cleaning, the instruments are then hand sorted into the particular dental procedure group, placed in sealable bags containing one complete group of instruments, and then inserted into an autoclave for sterilization. This is a time consuming task and requires additional handling of the cleaned and sterilized instruments.
To eliminate the sorting of groups of dental instruments used in a particular dental procedure from the large intermixed group of instruments removed from the ultrasonic cleaner after sterilization, it is known to use a flexible tie around each group of dental instruments used in a particular dental procedure. The instruments in the bag are then routed through the ultrasonic cleaning step while being retained in a particular dental procedure group. While the use of such ties eliminates sorting of particular instruments from a large intermixed group of instruments, each group of instruments is still handled by hand during rinsing, drying and placement in bags for sterilization.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a dental instrument holder which is designed to separately hold one group of instruments used in a particular dental procedure during ultrasonic cleaning of such instruments. It would also be desirable to provide such a dental instrument holder which is adjustable in size for use in holding a different number of dental instruments used in different dental procedures. Finally, it would be desirable to provide such a dental instrument holder which can be easily reused, is not easily susceptible to breakage, does not interfere with the ultrasonic cleaning of the dental instruments and eliminates hand contact with the instruments.